Đà Nẵng beaches face worst erosion in decades

ĐÀ NẴNG — A 500m section of beach in Ngũ Hành Sơn District of the central city of Đà Nẵng has been seriously eroded by uninterrupted rain and rising sea waves in the last two months.

Water has approached an under-construction resort and washed away 500m of sand on the beach.

The owner of the Song Đà Nẵng beach villa project set up a line of concrete blocks to limit the erosion, but it continued to reach towards the villas.

Rising sea water collapsed a section of the rock dyke of Centara Sandy beach resort, while sandbanks of some resorts along the coast of Ngũ Hành Sơn District were also smashed by water and hard rains.

In March, Mỹ Khê Beach witnessed the worst erosion that the city has seen in recent decades.

Residents of the Sơn Trà Peninsula said that a forest of casuarinas, growing since the 1960s, have helped protect the beach from erosion, but the rapid development of beach hotels and resorts slowly chipped away at the natural ‘green’ dyke.

Đà Nẵng, which has 90km of coastline, hosts 11 public beaches.

Erosion has also seriously damaged Cửa Đại Beach in Hội An City over the past decade, and experts have long worried that the serious erosion would expand to Đà Nẵng.

Experts from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) have warned that the serious erosion of beaches in Quảng Nam results from a rising sea level, poor management of the Vu Gia-Thu Bồn river system and rapid urbanisation. They said the erosion would continue to approach the Đà Nẵng coastline in the coming years. — VNS